- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, we're gonna show you
how to set up and connect the Blue Yeti microphone
with an audio interface.
A lot of people wanna do this.
There's a lot of reasons that people wanna do this.
So I'm gonna show you how to set up, connect
and what settings I would use.
Then at the end of this video
I'm gonna tell you why it's not a good idea
and why I don't recommend doing this at all.
So, first of all, if you do want pricing
or specs for anything that you see in this video,
we do have links down in the description below.
If you're wondering why I have the Blue Yeti up on a stand
with the shock mount and a wind screen,
we do have a separate video
showing how just those simple things
will transform the sound of your Blue Yeti microphone.
It'll give you way better quality,
way better than any improvement that you will get
by adding an audio interface to your setup.
But now we're just gonna get
into how to set everything up.
So the key to doing this is a cable like this one.
What this cable will do is it will take the headphone output
of your Blue Yeti USB microphone
and it'll convert it to quarter-inch cables
which you can plug into any audio interface.
If you have something like the Focusrite Scarlet 2i2
with two inputs, you can choose to use one
or both of the quarter-inch cables.
If you have something like the Focusrite Scarlett Solo,
where you only have one quarter-inch input,
then just use one.
Typically with the cable like this,
you will have one that's white and one that's red.
With this cable, they're both gray here,
but you'll notice that one has a white ring on the sleeve,
one has a red ring.
Typically the white one always represents
what would have been the left ear of your headphones
and the red one there would represent
what would have been your right ear of your headphones.
So if I'm only plugging one of these in,
generally I'll always plug the left one in.
And so what we're gonna do now
is we're gonna connect this cable
to the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.
So we're gonna plug the headphone jack into the Blue Yeti,
and then on the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2,
I'm gonna plug the white one into input one,
and the red one in to input two.
Now I have the volume set for the headphone jack output
on the Blue Yeti to 50%.
And I have both preamps
on the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 set to 50%.
And I can see on my computer here
that I'm getting a great level at -8
which is exactly where I wanna be recording.
The Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 is probably
the most popular audio interface in the world.
So you can't really go wrong
with an audio interface like that.
If you do wanna save a little bit of money,
you could go with something like the Focusrite Scarlett Solo
which only has one quarter inch input.
For this, it's a mono source.
So there's no real advantage
of going stereo here over quarter-inch.
But one reason that people would wanna do
something like this is if they're looking
for coloration of the preamps.
An example of that would be the Solid State Logic SSL2+
audio interface.
It has the SSL preamps, which a lot of people
just like the way that they sound.
99% of the people that listen to your podcast
or whatever you're trying to record,
won't notice a difference
but people do like how this sounds
and that might be what you're trying to achieve.
Okay, so why don't I recommend a setup like this?
What's wrong with it?
Why is it not a good idea?
One, there's just a lot of points of failure here,
there's a lot of cable.
You have to power of the Blue Yeti,
then you need to cable it,
then you need to power the Focusrite Scarlett,
then you're connecting that to your computer.
So it's triple the pieces of equipment that you need
in order to get the signal to your computer.
Two, let's start with defining what a USB microphone is.
A Blue Yeti is an awesome plug and play microphone.
That's why it's so highly recommended
because of its simplicity.
So it's really convenient.
The reason it's convenient
is because inside the Blue Yeti, there's a microphone,
and there's already an audio interface inside there.
So you're converting this microphone from an analog signal
to a digital signal, then go to your computer.
But when we don't use that USB output out of the Blue Yeti,
we're taking that analog signal,
we're converting it to a digital signal for the computer.
Then it's reconverting that to an analog signal
for your headphones on the Blue Yeti.
So already we've gone analog, digital, analog.
Then we're sending that to the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
or any other audio interface
where we're reconverting it to digital.
Now, the thing with audio equipment
is every piece of equipment that you add to a chain
actually degrades the quality.
You will never add quality to an audio component
by adding equipment.
What you could possibly gain is flavor or tone.
Some people like two preamps, for example,
that add coloration.
But with every step in an audio signal chain,
you're always going to add more noise
especially when you convert it analog to digital.
So we're going analog, digital, analog, digital, computer.
So we've added a lot of complexity,
we've probably added a lot of noise.
I haven't measured it all,
but without a doubt we've added a ton of noise
into this recording by going back and forth like that.
You're adding latency,
you're adding all the things that audio people
try to get out of their system.
So unless you're trying to do something very specific
like color the audio in a certain way,
I recommend you remember why you bought the Blue Yeti
in the first place.
And that's for its simplicity and reliability
because there's one cable that you connect
to your computer and you're ready to party.
But again, if you do go with something like this,
I would recommend an XLR microphone.
Maybe you're just needing to convert
and you're wanting to buy an audio interface
as your upgrade path, that's one reason.
You could possibly be doing this
just to experiment with more audio equipment.
But in terms of quality,
you're not gonna be improving the quality by doing this.
I hope that answers any questions that you have.
If you do still have questions,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
If there's something I missed,
if there's a reason that you're trying to do this
that I haven't thought of,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
I'm super eager to hear what you're trying to do.
Again, if you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you've seen in this video,
please check out the links down in the description below.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like, and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)